As the world’s largest film industry, Indian cinema has only recently
begun to receive serious scholarly attention. This course will give
students an overview of Indian cinema in its historical, cultural,
and aesthetic contexts. Students will learn how to analyze Indian
films in terms of their formal techniques, narrative conventions, and
viewing contexts, as well as in terms of broader cultural issues.
These issues will include: “art” vs. commercial cinema; the relation
of Hollywood and “Bollywood”; the culture of stardom; gender and
national identity; the representation of history; and cinema’s role
in the South Asian diaspora. Weekly screenings will give students a
sampling of a representative range of film-making traditions, such as
studio-era films, Bombay films, “art” films, the “middle” cinema,
documentary films, regional cinema, and diaspora films. Students will
not be expected to have any prior knowledge of India or an Indian
language.

Requirements of the class will be regular attendance of lectures and
film screenings, pop quizzes, two exams, and two essays (4-6 pages
and 7-10 pages long). The first essay will be a short analysis of an
assigned film sequence in terms of both its formal elements and its
cultural context. The second will be a longer essay on an assigned
topic. The grade breakdown will be as follows:

Quizzes:				20%
Midterm exam:			20%
Final exam:				25%
Essay #1:				15%
Essay #2:				20%